For more than a year, a portion of my apartment complex in Beijing has been a construction zone; squat, old buildings have been razed, and new towers are sprouting in their stead. The area is blocked off by walls covered with large, professionally printed green banners that stretch perhaps 15 feet high. A slogan on one reads: "The China Dream, My Dream."

It's hard to convey China's transformations to two kinds of people: people who have never been there and people who have just been there for the first time. Experiencing China in 2014 for the first time, many Americans are struck by the modernity of...

Ai Weiwei isn't able to leave Beijing because of his ongoing legal battles with the Chinese government, but the world comes to him. The artist is keeping busy with projects that include a planned heavy-metal album and a new movie.
Ai's debut album...

BEIJING -- Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident, is charging that New York University is kicking him out of a fellowship because of pressure from the Chinese government.
The self-trained lawyer, who set off an international incident last year by...

WASHINGTON -- Edward Snowden, the former U.S. government contractor who leaked secret details of official surveillance programs, pledged Monday to release more information about U.S. intelligence-gathering methods that he described as “nakedly,...

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BEIJING -- Gary Locke, the first Chinese American ambassador to Beijing, said Wednesday he will leave his post early next year to rejoin his wife and three children in Seattle.
The former Commerce secretary and two-term governor of Washington said his reasons for stepping down were purely personal, revolving around the education of his children, two of whom are in high school.
"We wanted our kids to have junior and senior year of high school back in the United States," Locke said in a telephone...

BEIJING -- As the United States' first Chinese American ambassador to China, Gary Locke made an impression on many ordinary people here with his down-to-earth ways – carrying his own backpack, paying for his Starbucks with a coupon and flying economy class.
His man-of-the-people demeanor, honed as two-term governor of Washington state, provided a sharp contrast to the often-remote and sometimes corrupt ways of the Chinese ruling class. Many netizens approved of his style, but a number of media...

Memorial Day is — and should be — about remembering American sacrifices in war. It therefore may seem odd to look to a Chinese man as the exemplar of the holiday's meaning. But it is by no means a stretch.
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng arrived in New York from China a little more than a week ago. In April, he had escaped from house arrest in his village, fled tothe U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and after some high-level negotiating was allowed to leave China to study abroad.
Mr. Chen's...

Chen Guangcheng Photos

Freedom High School grad Daniel Dae Kim, star of "Hawaii Five-O,' has been making the rounds on the east coast, making appearances at a White House dinner with the Prime Minister of Japan Yoshihiko Noda hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on April 30,

Toting his own backpack. Flying coach. Buying coffee with a coupon. Just who does Gary Locke think he is? The United States ambassador to China was recently pilloried in Chinese newspaper editorials for his part in the saga of Chen Guangcheng, a blind dissiden